AMERICAN BROTHER

I.

After nearly a decade in America, you will finally buy a ticket home to Nigeria. The journey will be your answer to your sister’s sudden increase in calling you, her voice trembling across the Atlantic, though she insists everything is fine. Seven years will have passed since Mama’s death and burial. So why will your sister, Okoma, insist you return now, even though no one has died this time?

In the Arrivals Hall, beneath the mix of robotic announcements and human chatter, your family will regale you with a flood of stories, all of them rushing at once. Your father and Uncle Fidelis will not be among them—they are not family.

You will greet your two cousins, ChiChi and Bobo, waving with excitement. They will expect you to slip into the florid American accent which ChiChi once mocked as the pri-pri thing, just as she had teased you over the phone during your first year in America about snatching the Benin Bronzes in those American museums—“They don’t belong there,” she murmured. Seven years in America, yet you will speak with the same rooted cadence, the same familiar exclamations. This, like the well-tailored Ankara outfit you will wear instead of a hefty coat and mittens, will be intentional. They will hide their disappointment in plastic smiles. But of course, you are not returning as a caricature of Nollywood’s Osuofia in London. You will be returning as yourself.

You will smile at Bobo, remembering how he once insisted that books would lead you nowhere. The smile, thin and practiced, will undermine the fact that he closed his warehouse on Mile Three Road, where he deals on assorted second-hand Italian furniture, just to pick you up at the Port Harcourt International Airport in Omagwe. What he will not understand—what you will not bother explaining—is that your smile will be your victory, your quiet triumph. After all, he never understood you twelve years ago in that backyard canopied with guava trees. You will remember how you begged him then, crying, not to tell Mama of the thing you were doing with your neighbor’s son. But he refused.

II.

As Bobo’s car rolls away from the airport, Okoma will show you photos of her twins: littler Spencer kicking a ball and Amaka captured mid-motion in a blur. If you look intently at her face and forearms, you will see whorls of skin dappled with pale patches, like a variegated flower. You will recall that you did not attend their naming ceremony. In the front seat, ChiChi will remind everyone that their exuberance, given what happened to their parents, is a miracle. They will be kind when you meet them. Your childhood was not kind.

At Rumuola Roundabout, when the car veers right, you will be surprised. “Why are we taking this road?”

“We don’t live in the university’s staff quarters anymore. Not after Austin divorced me,” Okoma will respond. “Besides, those bungalows were made for families, not for the divorced.” She will manufacture a loud, affected laugh and immediately tease you about your relationships abroad. You will not indulge her. Instead, you will turn to the window and say nothing, the air outside greyed by the harmattan and riddled with golden headlights, streetlamps alike, and outdoor sconces lining the fences of opulent hotels.

Traffic will stall as a wailing ambulance hurtles across the road—an anomaly in Port Harcourt, serendipitous even. Taking advantage of the gridlock, a wiry boy will hover by the windows of crawling buses, brandishing chilled sachet water and hankies to the pensive passengers, each straining to glimpse the patient now fading into the distance ahead. As the traffic diffuses and the buses gain speed, he will dart to snatch the naira notes jutting out from the windows. This, his alacrity, will remind you of how you once sped to Boma’s house seven years ago, on the night before your first flight out of Nigeria.

Passing Aba Road, where your old family house still stands among faded tenements, there will be things you and Okoma will not discuss. You will not comment on the city’s new, burnished look sprouting around it. Bobo will brag that the city finally has a working mayor, but ChiChi will counter that the mayor’s wife outshines him, parading gaudy handbags and armed guards at every event. The car will shudder with laughter en route.

Solemnly, you will take in the spectacular sight of resplendent skyscrapers and behemoth flyovers wreathed in ads and murals, towering over the road. One of them will loom over where once stood your neighbor’s small kiosk and the newspaper vendors. Back then, fathers gathered there to fervently debate football and business until everything thawed into a storm of clashing opinions. The Tide used to be you and Papa’s favorite paper. You will remember how he watched with pride as your fingers flicked through the pages, until he learned that those same curious fingers had frisked another boy’s thighs.

You will recall the night Papa staggered home, drunk and crackling with rage, and smashed a STAR bottle against Mama’s forehead. You will recall the long moments afterward as he spat at her, “Witch, your pikin na homo—like your foolish brother Fidelis.” And the moment he threw your belongings outside and shouted, “Leave my house!” Mama had crouched on the veranda, bleeding, yelling in Ogba, “If my son leaves, I quit this marriage!” For a moment, Papa froze, his hands suspended mid-air. He charged toward her, but stopped in his tracks, as if sparing her some time to recant her words. Mama did not avoid his eyes. He retreated into their bedroom. When he emerged, you saw a billow of blouses, Hollandais, and lace flung into the air. And then the door closed with a sound of finality. Kwràkàm-kpòchi. Papa sent all of you packing that night, including Okoma.

Like all humans, Papa lived only once, for 67 years. You will wonder how he was buried. Was his corpse levitating somewhere in the city like a superhero, honored for how he handled your “immorality”? Or was he quietly lowered into mother earth, where every man who loved or failed to love his family lies buried? You will settle on neither. Throughout his lifetime, you never called him Papa. Not even in your memory. He was Sir, a title you reserved for men who did not know you and whom you did not entirely care for. “Pops” or “Daddie” always tasted like the bitter ogwu iba decoction Mama forced between your teeth whenever you developed a fever. Mama was buried in her maiden home in Omoku. Okoma told you this over the phone.

Above all else, you and Okoma will not argue politics, or corruption, or how Americans do not sell their votes the way many Nigerians do nowadays, according to Okoma. Nor will you mention the university strikes and relentless student protests—they make you livid. Your scholarship to read Post-decolonialism in America was devoid of these setbacks. You did everything to secure that foreign scholarship. You knew it would catapult you out of this country. The only criterion was a first-class GPA. In the local university, you bought it for the right price. You bribed professors to pass. Each transaction, your heart threatened to explode, but your hands moved with purpose. “Do the needful now, otherwise we’ll meet next year,” one despotic professor had announced to your class, crammed with students she had already victimized.

Now, your sister will make a point of clearing her throat twice: you will not have heard the first attempt. You will be pulled back into your life inside this sweltering car on the verge of overheating. Still, it will be almost difficult to efface from your mind the life of that boy hawker. With gratitude, you will think of the dire times in Omoku in which Mama sold akara and akamu by the roadside to keep you and Okoma from hawking. This was after her divorce from Sir.

Now that Okoma has your attention, she will tell you that a woman is waiting at home to meet you. She will explain why the woman could not join them at the airport—“housekeeping,” she will say. You will nod as if you understood, though the thought of why a househelp would be waiting to meet you at all will linger. Registering the thought, you will fiddle with your phone. Have you landed, babes? a text message from Boma. You will not reply, out of indecision rather than coyness. Other notifications will pop up from your Google Alerts: “Russia Strikes Ukraine Again,” “Naira Slumps in Financial Market,” “Breaking: African ordained Pope,” “Chibok: Revisiting the Trauma.”

You will chuckle inwardly, wondering how even Google seems aware of your return. Okoma, seeing your smile, will assume you are simply happy to feel the harmattan wind hitting your skin with a coolness afresh, welcoming you home. More importantly, that you are happy to meet the woman.

III.

By the time Bobo parks in front of Okoma’s apartment in Diobu Axis, the dipping sun, having splashed a sepia glow over dusk, will be a shy half-disc peeking behind a towering flyover, as if avoiding blame. The street, as always, will be teeming with blue keke napeps, rickety buses, and people who, nocturnal as an owl, will still roam in the descending darkness. The air, stale and soot-laced, will roar with traders haggling by the roadside and teenagers flying kites down the street. This endless scene, as you will notice, will mirror the chaotic vitality of Boma’s recent painting: Pitakwan Pulse. Boma can sometimes be punctilious about his art; most times, however, he playfully hurls streaks of colors at you, and before long the whole place becomes a colorful mess of art—a small ritual that soaks your heart in love, that you will gravely miss now.

You will alight and follow Okoma inside, while Bobo drives off with ChiChi, claiming he’s behind schedule to deliver furniture to a client, although this will be a lie. Most likely, he will get wasted in a club tonight. Even at 40, you will wonder if his bachelorhood still totters on the edges of boyish carefreeness.

Inside, the twins will greet you with uninhibited joy. You will love them instantly. Seated, you will hoist Spencer onto your lap while Amaka stands, plucking at your coiffed beard. She will resemble a darker version of Okoma, save for her vitiligo. To entertain them, you will whip your phone out of your breast pocket and slide through your pictures abroad. In one picture, you will be sitting under a tree, verdant in the summer sun. When the picture of you and Boma kissing unexpectedly appears, you will abruptly quench the screen, your chest tightening. Your sister will be out of sight.

You will exhale in relief.

After the twins eat, Okoma will retire them to bed and return to the living room.

“Who do you want me to meet?”

“Please eat your óhà soup first.”

You will raise a brow, and she will drop playing hostess. “Anyways,” she will laugh, adjusting her blouse theatrically. “Ukachi!”

A woman will appear from the kitchen. Something in the way she hesitates by the doorway, twiddling the hem of her skirt, will spark suspicion. Now, you will understand why Okoma’s calls multiplied in the past weeks.

“Ukachi,” Okoma will say, beaming, “meet your husband, my American brother.”

Instead of saying, What the fuck is this? you will smile politely and shake her, as if following the unwritten script. She will smell of the óhà soup. As she speaks, you will notice how her sentences are vainly Americanized. How, “Okoma has told me a lot about you,” will tumble out as, “Okoma has told me ah-lorah-baw ya.”

Despite her efforts at pretense, you will trace her accent to the root. “Where are you from?” you will inquire.

Before Ukachi answers, Okoma will interject almost breathlessly, “Can’t you see she’s a proper Igbo girl?” She will twirl Ukachi like a mannequin, slip into Igbo to give her the comfort of the familiar. “Look at her skin: udala nmịcha. Her hip: achalugo! Her accent, ah, matches your own. She will be doing her MSc abroad, too. Guess where?” She will not wait for your reply. Then, in Ogba: “Princeton! Kwü là ị làik là!”

You will find it amusing, her teasing insistence that you like her. They will join you to laugh, awkwardly at first, until they sense your laughter is an insult. The room will stiffen, as if someone sucked the air out.

“Ị lị mûnị kịnị?” Okoma will snap. You will not answer why she wants to know the reason for your laughter, until it dissipates on your own terms. “This is unbelievable,” you will shake your head slowly, left, right, left again. Sit.

And Okoma’s frown will furrow into a glare. “Why are you treating her like this?”

You will refuse to indulge another bout of Okoma’s willful ignorance, much like Mama’s blind interrogation—“Wetin you do with that boy?” she’d demanded, yanking at your twelve-year-old ear—despite Bobo having given her a detailed, slightly embellished account. The boy was not really your neighbor’s son; he was her nephew, hosted for the long vacation. Similarly, Bobo had been your family guest that August. What did Mama expect you to confess then? That you liked how your neighbor’s nephew whispered in your ear with a confident stutter? How he loved the way you swayed your waist, the way you graced the earth like a breeze? And how he laid you sprawled on the carpet of strewn guava leaves, his head pressed between your thighs until you moaned loud enough for Bobo to walk in and scream, “Àrụ!”

Those details would have destroyed Mama.

So now, you will calmly ask Okoma, “What do you think I just did?” A question posed against a question, the Nigerian declaration of defiance. “Where did you get her from?”

Okoma will begin her explanation like a recitation. They met at the campus clinic two years back when she took the twins for their final polio vaccine. Ukachi, on the other hand, had come for a typhoid test report. Okoma will sigh, as if exasperated from saying too much. “That’s all in the past now. What I’m saying now is”—she will pull Ukachi close—“you must marry her.”

You will remain unmoved, a learned defense against her ambush.

“She’s the perfect match for you. Potential Americanah—checked. Why won’t you give her a chance to know you?”

“You don’t even know me, Okoma. You, a PhD holder!”

“No, òwòwór! We read the white man’s books to pass exams, not to lose ourselves!”

In the middle of the quarrel, as embarrassment mutes Ukachi, she will tear across the room to God-knows-where. Nobody will go after her.

“You are homosexual—so? Where did that land Uncle Fidelis: exposed and lynched. Or you want to stay in America and practice all those wrong things they do there?” Okoma will heave her shoulders, muttering, “Òwòwór, ọ dólór mé!” It won't happen.

You will have expected this. And so, you will let her perform.

“How then will I become an aunty? Mama will wince in her grave if she hears of this.” Her words will pile on top of each other and fall heavily on you. Something already broken inside you will break beyond measure.

You will want to remind her that Mama and Papa’s marriage did not end well, and who is she to find you a wife? But you will relent. Like a thing stuck in quicksand, your words will sink. Not because you cannot confront Okoma, but because you will not want to relive those nights you watched Mama’s fear engulf her. Watched her burn scented candles atop your head, chanting scriptures. Those nights you wept beside the prophet’s mirror, willing your reflection—which you believed hoarded the opposite sexuality—to trade places with you in the material world, so the torture would stop. It never did.

As Okoma’s voice eventually lowers, your eyes, tears-glazed, will drift to the framed picture above her head: you and Okoma in neat etibo outfits flanking a seated Mama on Christmas morning, Okoma’s smile diastematic. You will remember her saying, six years after that lovely shot, that she always knew you would live just fine like any other boy, no matter what Bobo had said. Maybe this was what she actually meant: living your life not just like any other boy, but a straight one.

And you will wonder whether, along with her marriage, she also lost sight of herself.

Finally, you will rise and stomp out the backdoor, ignoring her voice calling out your name, unwilling to cry in front of your sister—feeble, like the twelve-year-old you who loathed himself for loving another boy.

IV.

In the backyard beneath the chirping of crickets, you will hear Ukachi’s breath catching. When you finally spot her sitting in the alcove under a tree, her knees pulled to her chest, vulnerable, you will brush the back of your hand across your eyes again, and again. She will be scrolling through photos of you and a man huddled together on Facebook. It will occur to you only now that you haven’t replied his text since you arrived.

“That’s Boma,” you will offer over her shoulder.

She will flinch. “How long have you been standing there?” A sniffle will break her voice.

You will walk closer, ignoring the smudged makeup streaking her face. Touching her shoulder will feel excessive, so you will not.

“We live in Brooklyn,” you will begin tentatively, like you are testing a potent pool. “We met in undergrad days. He read fine arts, now doing his MFA.” You will pause, then ask, “What did you read?”

She will admit she never graduated, burying her face in her knees.

You will crouch beside her, quiet before her honesty. The space between you could fit another person if you tried, but the silence will settle into it.

“He gave me this bracelet a night before my plane left America.”

She will lift your wrist gently, studying the pendant shape a sliced heart.

“He seems more than a friend,” she will say quietly.

Silence.

You will smile thinly. Then your phone will beep—missed WhatsApp calls and a text message from Boma: Babes, you are getting me worried.

“I want to see him,” she will say suddenly, still holding your wrist, her voice clear and sure.

Silence, steeped in contemplation, will fill your lungs. You will want your sister—and not this stranger—to meet Boma first.

Still, you will open WhatsApp and place the video call.

The caller ID will flicker “Hubbie,” yet Ukachi will watch without recoiling, utterly unappalled. Her grip on your wrist will not slacken.

This—this moment—will be the truth behind your long-drawn dreams of coming home. Your mask will crack. If reality proves unstable, build a new path. If the mask begins to fall apart, you will decide whether to save it—or to finally stop wearing it.

The end.